Fate's Weird Ways
by rachelAbendstern
Summary: Oneshot, SLASH. Chris' struggle with his brother from someone else's point of view.Placed in the unchanged future.


Title: Fate's Weird Ways

Author: rachelAbendstern

Summary: Someone else's thoughts about Chris, the war and the balance of good and evil...

Spoilers: Season 6 Charmed sort of

Disclaimer: No, Charmed is not mine. What a shame! I'm just borrowing it...

**This is SLASH, yaoi, shay-a'chern, boys-boys or whatever you want to call it!** Don't like it? Don't read it, duh! I won't accept any flames I get on this fact. Every other review – even if you don't like the story – are welcome :)

Fate's Weird Ways

Searching throughout the whole goddamn place for almost twenty minutes now, Damian finally found who he was looking for. There he was, sitting in a dark corner on the higher level of the club, barely visibly from where the man was standing on the former dance floor below, blankly staring into space, brooding, while every other being in the building was trying to sleep.

Damian sighed heavily. This boy, no, this man was too responsible for his own good. At only twenty he was already more mature than anyone his age by right should be. It almost seemed as if Chris was taking all the guilt, all the blame and hurt and anger onto himself that his brother obviously wasn't capable of feeling anymore.

Wyatt and Chris couldn't have been more different if they tried. Where Wyatt wanted to destroy, Chris wanted to protect; where Wyatt wanted to hurt, Chris would give his right arm if he could heal; where Wyatt wanted to lead, Chris wanted nothing more than to merge with the shadows and let others play leader. Where Wyatt wanted power, Chris felt obliged to try and restore the balance even if all he really wanted was to be left in peace.

All of which led to why he was now hiding here in the darkness of his mother's decaying club.

There had been another attack today. The resistance had taken it upon them to search for the remaining whitelighters who had survived the massacre, lost white witches and just about anyone else who suffered under Lord Wyatt's regime and/or was willing to help. But today, they had walked into a trap – and it had cost them dearly. Many of the people who had died today had been friends or acquaintances and Chris took each of their deaths to heart, feeling the guilt as if they had been killed by his own hands.

The young witch's behaviour only confirmed an observation Damian had made a while ago. Humans were foolish to romance their wars, spinning tales of how glorious it was to serve the 'right cause', tales of knights in shining armour who gave their lives on the battlefield. All that war was about was death; it was about innocents dying, about losing the ones dearest to you; about the fear whether today it would be you that wouldn't return from a mission; about the guilt to be alive while others were dead and about the guilt you felt for being happy that it wasn't you that had died today. And all the while the ones responsible were sitting some place safe, recounting the losses and moving on to new tactics.

It was almost laughable, Damian thought as he slowly made his way up the stairs to the lonely haunted figure he had spied from downstairs. A few years ago, he couldn't have been bothered with any of that. He and his kind were natural enemies to whitelighters, white witches, and generally to everything good and innocent in this world. Without Wyatt's rise to power, they would never have ended up fighting on the same side. And he would never have ended up knowing the amazing, strong, stubborn, fiery person that was Chris Halliwell.

But after three years, the war had blurred the edges of almost everything – good and bad, villains and white hats, angels and demons... People, enemies that would have gladly cut each other limb from limb not too long ago suddenly found themselves being forced to get along.

In his case, it had actually been the darklighters themselves who had made the first move and had proposed a cease-fire in order to defeat the self-proclaimed King of the World. Heir to King Arthur his ass!

There really had not been much of an option for either of them; not after realizing that Wyatt's slaughter of whitelighters jeopardized their dark counterparts' entire existence. After all, they were two different sides of the same coin; without whitelighters – there would be no more darklighters needed. So now, instead of hunting them down, Damian's kind actually helped in protecting their arch enemies. The darklighter supposed it was Fate's weird way to re-establish the balance that the twice-blessed witch had disrupted.

He had reached the top of the stairs without Chris even noticing. The boy was lost in his own hell for the moment. Looking down at him, watching him, Damian still couldn't understand how it had happened that he cared for this witch, for this son of a whitelighter and a Charmed One as strong as he did.

Mind you, it had not happened all of a sudden.

In the beginning, Chris was just another disgusting Whitelighter, another good witch he had to play nice with if they wanted to even have a chance at defeating the twice-blessed. He was just another enemy made ally. Damian could not feel love for an enemy. He could feel respect however and he had noticed from the beginning that the boy had that weird kind of courage that could sometimes be found in people you least expected it from. And that was how it all had begun.

Chris might not be as powerful as his brother, not with his magicks and not in physical power. Yet, he was strong in his own way, a way Wyatt could never hope to understand. The half-breed never backed down, never gave up even though everyone he had once loved was either gone, ignoring him or out to kill him. He always did what was necessary, even if he didn't like it.

To be perfectly honest, Damian had been surprised to find that Chris had his own skeletons in his closet. He wasn't the innocent, inexperienced, self-righteous young half-angel the darklighter had thought him to be at first. To the contrary, the young witch was just as versed in Dark Magic as his older brother was; and Chris had made use of it, too. Like so many more in these times he had killed and it had left its marks on him. But unlike Wyatt, he didn't succumb to the call of darkness, to the lure it held for weaker spirits; he didn't let it corrupt him.

Still, after all he had witnessed, after all he had _done_, Chris had innocence to him Damian thought as he wordlessly sat behind the witch and pulled him into his arms, offering some desperately needed comfort. An innocence he had begrudgingly come to value and would now give his life to preserve.

Yes, war had blurred the edges of everything. But it had also made him see some things clearer. If they ever wanted to have a world back where each of them had his place, where everyone was needed for some thing or another they would have to work towards counterbalancing what Wyatt had messed up.

Good and bad, black and white, yin and yang; there was a certain order to be kept for their world to work as they were used to, as it was supposed to. When Wyatt, who was predestined to be the most powerful force of Good in their times, had turned to Evil, the scale had dropped to one side too quickly, disrupting the balance that their whole existence depended on. Maybe, to regain that balance, there had to be a force of Evil changing sides as completely and irrevocably as the twice-blessed had.

Strong hands grasped his arms when Chris let his head fall back onto Damian's shoulder, burying his nose in the other man's neck and interrupting his musings.

"Damian?" He heard Chris ask him in a voice so small he almost did not hear it. "How can he do all that? How can he do all the things he does _and not feel a thing_?"

Not having an answer to Chris' question Damian just tightened his hold around the younger man. What was there to say? If anyone knew an answer to that it was the twice-blessed himself – or possibly his younger brother.

"I don't recognize my brother anymore..."

Some time later, when the heat of their passion had dissolved the last remnants of depressing thoughts and Chris lay curled around him, the man could not help but wonder if the union of a darklighter and a whitelighter was just another step on the way, towards restoring what was lost.

_Or maybe_, the wry thought drifted through his sleep fogged mind, _maybe this was just Fate and her quirky sense of humour._

The End

A/N: These were just a little stray thoughts that drifted through my mind and wanted to come out. I was arguing with myself for quite some time if I should even post it. In the end, I decided to just risk it and let you decide whether it's worth something or not.


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